The culinary act, seen as an occasion of encounter, has been the first form of ritual: a pagan customary practice that has transcended to what is known as the Christian sacrament of the Eucharist. “Take and eat, this is my body; I am the bread of life, he who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.” According to Christian tradition transubstantiation is the physical transformation of bread and wine to Jesus Christ’s body and blood. A laid out table with tableware created from church host is the transfiguration of Jesus’ body in objects, in an ethereal personalization and veneration of the product. A comment on mass consumerism and the lack of values through the profanation of the host as a food substance, bringing it thus back to a worldly level. In a contemporary historic moment of ideological, political and religious crisis TRANSUBSTANTIA PAGANUS is a mirror that allows the comparison between the spectator and the metaphorical meaning of the work; we are all part of the process, victims and executioners of the decadence in every field of contemporary life: religion, politics, society and the environment. The objects composing the banquet reflect the condition of fragility and emptiness, celebrating the return to a process where symbolism is stronger than morphology, denying the object’s own substance which is lost in primordial and fragile forms.

CTRLZAK Art & Design Studio is a multidisciplinary team founded by Thanos Zakopoulos and Katia Meneghini. The studio operates internationally in the field of contemporary art and design with a creative vision which is not limited by a specific framework developing thus work that ranges from product and space design to case specific art projects and installations. With the use of semiotic tools within the creative process the studio proposes forms which surpass common aesthetic values working on a cognitive level. The concept behind each project is to inspire a responsible awareness through the ‘added value’ that art has for society with a special attention to issues of environmental impact.